10/8/2022 – Michigan 31, Indiana 10 – 6-0, 3-0 Big Ten It was 10-10 and it was stupid. Like half the games against Indiana, it was stupid and dumb. At some point I saw a highlight from that Denard game against Indiana where IU would score on a 15-play march and then Denard would immediately run for a 70 yard touchdown. "God, that game was stupid," I thought. Flinging the ball in the general direction of Junior Hemingway and hoping something good would happen, sort of thing. Charting 120 defensive plays, sort of thing. Craig Roh playing linebacker, sort of thing. Don't get me started about #chaosteam, or overtimes, or anything else. My IQ is already dropping precipitously. Any more exposure to Michigan-Indiana may render me unable to finish this column. (I would still be able to claim that MSU was defeated with dignity, if that was my purpose in life.) I had hoped that a little JJ McCarthy-led mediation in the locker room would straighten things out. Michigan did suff
[Patrick Barron] 9/1/2018 – Michigan 17, Notre Dame 24 – 0-1 Ah so it's this bit again. The bit where some people pick up on a factoid and yell about it a lot and other people yell at them about it. The bit where everyone's mad and trying to take it out on someone. I mean, I get it. Any properly scientific assessment of which football program it is the least fun to be a fan of will find a way to exclude Kansas for not actually being a football program and stick Michigan at the top. Nobody got into this to fight about the level of doomed we are every 3-4 years, never beat anyone of consequence, etc. But I don't want to do it again. I've done this three times before, once per coaching era this blog has seen the end of, and I've done all the stuff already: preaching patience, gallows humor, being legitimately angry, calling for various heads, writing about mattresses. I don't really feel like doing it all over again. I don't care to evaluate the prec
Connecticut Links: Preview, The Podcast, FFFF Offense (chart), FFFF Defense (chart) Something's been missing from Michigan gamedays since the free programs ceased being economically viable: scientific gameday predictions that are not at all preordained by the strictures of a column in which one writer takes a positive tack and the other a negative one… something like Punt-Counterpunt. PUNT By Bryan MacKenzie@Bry Mac I am officially a Gundy old; I’m writing this on my 40th birthday. I have been preparing for this day for a while now. Not actively preparing, mind you, as I’m not especially concerned about being 40. But I have been ramping up my old man-ness in recent months. Earlier this summer I returned a push lawn mower to the store because I “didn’t like the way it handled.” Two weeks ago I pulled a calf muscle while jogging. The gray hairs in my beard and temples have gone from “occasional glitch” to “please stop calling me ‘distinguished’.” I can also f
9/10/2022 – Michigan 56, Hawaii 10 – 2-0 There's a certain point where you're just unreasonably invested in some guy making a simple throw against a very bad team. JJ McCarthy rolled out on his second drive and had Erick All in the flat. Hawaii's safety was flying up at McCarthy, because McCarthy ran as much as he passed in Michigan's opener. All was open, and all McCarthy had to do was not screw up an easy play. He did not. He flipped the ball out to All, who picked up a first down. Hooray. I mean, what else was left? He'd just thrown a (nearly) in-stride bomb. As soon as he came in against Colorado State he ran for a touchdown, juking a safety along the way. He throws outs on a line, with velocity you can hear. He is a wide array of talents in one package. And so then there's just one thing left: don't be weird. Please, please, please don't be weird. Don't be really good at the hard things and turf every screen. Don't have exactly